Frontier Touring joins forces with live music giant AEG Presents

Just weeks after revealing a partnership with Chugg Entertainment, Frontier Touring's Michael Gudinski says a new joint venture with concert promoter and venue manager AEG Presents will bring enormous benefits to live music fans and artists across Australia and New Zealand.

Frontier's partnership with AEG, one of the world's leading music and sports entertainment companies, formalises a relationship that's existed for over a decade and brought some of the world's biggest touring artists to Australian stages, including Ed Sheeran and the Rolling Stones.

"The name of the company isn't changing," Gudinski said, referring to Frontier Touring, which has been touring artists and promoting concerts for close to four decades.

"It's about getting some artillery ... and it's very exciting. I've had many offers over the years [from overseas touring companies] and this really is a two-way street, there's lots to be done and it's quite inspiring."

The artillery that AEG Presents can bring to Frontier's battle with competing events promoter Live Nation is "not about trying to beat them", says Gudinski, but rather ensuring "there's always an alternative" to their strength. Live Nation is American owned and operates venues in Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as owning Ticketmaster.

"If it's an AEG world tour, there will be an AEG logo next to Frontier, but there's a lot of other opportunities here and I'd be watching this space, there's more announcements to come," Gudinski said. "We're fan-driven and artist-driven and we're going into battle."

The Rolling Stones in concert at Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, in 2014.Credit:Paul Jeffers

After renewing ties last month with former business partner Michael Chugg and gaining a 25 per cent stake in Chugg's CMC Rocks country music festival, Gudinski has predicted a surge in the popularity of country music locally, making the deal with AEG even more attractive as it also runs California's Stagecoach, one of the biggest country music festivals in the world.

AEG Presents, which has its headquarters in Los Angeles, also owns and runs Coachella, which is being headlined this weekend and next weekend by Australian band Tame Impala. The company also runs the hugely successful summer concerts in London's Hyde Park.

Chairman and chief executive of AEG Presents, Jay Marciano, who was about to watch Ed Sheeran perform at Tokyo Dome when he spoke to The Age, said his company has "a different approach to Live Nation" and that they rely on the strong track-record of businesses they partner with to deliver profitable tours for artists, and superior concert experiences for music fans.

Now that we have a proper partnership with Frontier, we'll be bringing more AEG tours to Australia.

"Because we're a private company we're much more drawn to entrepreneurs. We rely on them to run their business day to day," he said. "They make their decisions around which shows to promote and which artists to work with ... but when it comes to growth, that's where we start to become more involved and we have strong financial infrastructure to be able to do that, and a lot of experience in being able to help them grow their businesses."

Mr Marciano said AEG's experience with festivals, venue management and touring could help contribute to "at least $300 million worth of growth" with proper venue infrastructure in Australia and the wider region.

"Now that we have a proper partnership with Frontier, we'll be bringing more AEG tours to Australia and New Zealand, and over the next several years we'll start to announce new clubs and theatres. We're going to try to find a couple of really good festival destinations that we can invest capital in and make attractive to music fans and artists, such as we have at Coachella.

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"When you have local partners, you're putting a lot of trust in them and if a local partner doesn't do their job, AEG is being judged by the artist, so we choose our partners carefully. When we find a partner like Frontier,if we're able to work with them continuously, that's our first choice.

"Michael Gudinski is one of our heroes and while he's well known locally in Australia, he's also constantly travelled the world, finding new music, talking to new managers, new agents, always looking for the next artist to bring to Australia. Frankly, I couldn't think of a better person to fit the culture of AEG and our style of business, we're thrilled."